Earn More by Eliminating Waste

Each quarter Anita, who does our accounts, forces me under extreme duress to go through our company expenses spreadsheet with her.

It’s like going to the dentist.

I’m not a fan, but I also know it’s important and needs doing.

So I play ball.

She works her way down the list, asking the same question each time, “Do we still use or need this?”

“Yes.”

“And this?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“And this?”

“Um .. no, not really.”

“Can you cancel it then?”

“Um .. no, not really?”

“How come?”

“I think we still have some legacy links in our system using it.”

“You think?”

“Um .. yup. Can’t be sure.”

“Can you check?”

“Um .. we have hundreds of pages.”

(The solution to this was simple. I asked Leo, our tech guy, to run a database query for “geni(dot)us”. He found four results, put the pages in Google Sheet, then buzzed me the link on Slack. I opened each page containing the geni(dot)us link and swapped ’em out. $10/month saving.)

And this goes on and on.

Like I said, it’s like going to the damn dentist.

Important, but painful.

Ten years ago I shared an exercise with my audience. Where you list all your core expenses down, like this:

Once I had recorded all expenses, the next part was to convert everything to a daily value.

In that old ten-year-ago screenshot above our daily total was $115.54.

That paid for everything.

The next part — the fun part — was to build Tiny (Little) Asset Engines (read: recurring income streams) to cover each of these expenses.

The idea was to always have assets out on the inter-webs what would earn a tiny little bit of income each day, and cover all the expenses.

This way you get to live “for free,” right?

And when this happens, the balance of power shifts.

When you don’t have to stress out about making rent and putting food on the table, you’re FREED up to do your best work.

To focus on LONG TERM strategic thinking…

(Instead of having that short-term results-now mindset.)

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Jeff Bezos, and how his long-term thinking has resulted in Amazon becoming one of our most loved (and feared; depending on who you are) and valuable businesses today.

Magic can (and does) happen when you get to focus on long-term over “I GOTTA MAKE COIN NOW!” thinking.

At the time of writing “The Battle Plan” exercise, an Israeli guy named Igal was in the Israeli army (mandatory service).

He loved the idea I had presented and ran with it.

He then found an old World of Warcraft affiliate campaign that I had created back in 2006 and shared with the world.